Ely stared at the blank screen for a moment. He had a question to ask of the Councillor himself. He called the office again, and again the assistant answered.
“Yes? What now?”
“The bodies. What am I to do with them?”
“Bodies? Oh, the Greenes. Hold on, I’ll look it up.” There was a long pause. “Protocol is that there will have to be an autopsy. I’ve ordered a transport to take them to Tower-Thirteen,” the assistant said.
“And…” Ely began, but the assistant had ended the call. And what about the children, Ely had been about to ask, but he wasn’t going to call a third time. He decided it didn’t have to be his problem. He tapped out a message, informing their Instructor to break the news to them, then made a note to double check the recording of that conversation. The children’s reactions might be interesting. He was certain they weren’t involved, but perhaps they knew something.
A light began to flash in the corner of his screen. It was an urgent message from Nurse Gower. She wanted to know why he wasn’t in the infirmary or, more importantly, why Grimsby still was.
Unable to put it off any longer, he walked over to the elevator, and headed up to the infirmary.
“You have the right to a trial, your guilt to be judged by a jury of your peers. Should you choose to waive the right to trial, I will sentence you here and now. That judgement will be binding, with no possibility of an appeal,” Ely said.
“Yeah, I know,” Grimsby moaned. Hunched on the small chair in the corner of the infirmary, his arm covered in a plastic case, he’d lost all of his earlier bluster.
“Which is it?” Ely asked.
“I’ll go with you. Sentencing here and now.”
Ely nodded, and glanced down at the screen on his wristboard, making sure that the cameras in the infirmary had recorded that. The dented helmet was just too uncomfortable to wear, and he’d taken it off the moment he’d finished his call with the Councillor. He tapped out a command.
“That’s been notarised and logged. You made the right decision,” he added. Grimsby looked up at him. Ely tapped out another command. On a screen on the infirmary wall a list came up with the names of all the citizens in the Tower. Next to each was a number. Ely scrolled down until he reached Grimsby’s. Twelve names below, there was a thick red line.
“I see you’re on 10,073 points.”
“I’m on the ballot for the first colony ship.” Defiance flared for a moment, before Grimsby added, in a more subdued tone, “Or I was.”
Good, Ely thought, the man understood. Points were the only currency the City had. They’d once been awarded for inter-Tower competitions. A long time ago, before Ely had left school, there had even been tournaments between the cities. Sporting, music, arts, anything that could be competed in, was, as long as it could be done virtually. Even then there had been no energy to waste transporting people halfway across the planet or even on frivolous trips to the other Towers. And then there had come the rains, and there wasn’t the energy or time to waste on the competitions. But the points had continued even though there were few luxuries on which they could be spent. They were still one of the factors used to determine who was issued a breeding licence, but principally they were used to allocate places on the colony ships.
The first ship only had places for one thousand citizens. Those places were to be determined by a ballot, scheduled to be held shortly after the election. The threshold for entry into that ballot was 10,000 points.
A point could be earned for every extra hour spent in Recreation. That was how most citizens accrued them. Grimsby, Ely noted, was different. He’d earned his through popularity. Every six months, each citizen was given five points that they could award to someone else. Grimsby had procured more than three hundred of his that way.
“You are currently seventy-three points over the threshold. You know the law. I’m meant to dock you one point per hour lost.”
“I was just defending myself,” Grimsby said “I didn’t—”
“I know you didn’t throw the first punch. I saw. But I also saw you kick the man when he was down. That kick is the reason he was transported to Tower-Thirteen. One worker’s lost labour whilst he recovers works out at two hundred hours, and that’s before adding in the energy cost of transportation, the labour of the nurses here, the doctors over on Tower-Thirteen—”
“Hang on, that’s not fair,” Grimsby protested. “I mean, what are the nurses going to do otherwise. That’s what they’re here for, isn’t it?”
“You think that their time is better spent taking care of you when it could be spent in Recreation or down on one of the Assemblies?” Ely retorted. “And what of the loss to Tower-One. The man won’t be sent back here. Most likely he’ll be sent to the launch site for his part in the riot.”
“But then he’ll still be working, won’t he? Whether it’s here or at the launch site, he’ll be productive,” Grimsby argued.
“That’s not the law. The labour has been lost to Tower-One. And the law says I can fine you one point per hour lost. And that worker has been lost for good.”
“What are you saying?” Grimsby whined.
“It’s rather poetic,” Ely said. “It will take seventeen years and nine months to breed up a replacement for Mr Carlisle. That was what you were fighting about, wasn’t it? Breeding up more unproductive mouths. Well, thanks to you, that’s what we now need. Those seventeen years and nine months represent nearly fifty thousand hours of labour lost.”
“You’re fining me for fifty thousand hours?” he stammered in shock.
“I could do. That’s what the letter of the law allows.” Ely let the words hang there, waiting to see if Grimsby would notice the branch being held out for him. He didn’t.
“I’m inclined to be lenient,” Ely continued. “Enough labour has been lost to this Tower today already.” Ely glanced at the two bodies lying on the stretchers in the middle of the room. Grimsby didn’t follow his gaze. The man was so lost in his own wretchedness, he hadn’t even noticed them. “I’m docking you seventy-two points,” Ely went on. “The rest I’m holding back. One more infraction and I’ll charge you immediately. You won’t make it onto any of the colony ships. You’ll be left here on Earth. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Thank you, thank you. They always said you civic servants were…”
Ely waved him into silence. He was about to send him away, then he remembered that he’d allocated the man’s ‘home’ to one of the Durhams for the night. He glanced over at Nurse Gower. He’d never got on with the nurses. Or to be more accurate they, who had been working in the civic service long before he was appointed, didn’t get on with him. He picked up his helmet and stood.
“You can stay here for the rest of this shift. Try and get some sleep without one of the machines. Consider that…” He glanced at Nurse Gower. “An extra punishment.”
He headed out the door.
Chapter 3 - Control
“How could you not have noticed the camera was pointing at the wall?” Ely asked.
“Because it’s just me down here to watch 12,000 citizens,” Vauxhall said.
“I know that there’s just you here.” The other two Controllers had been re-assigned at the same time as the other Constables. “But I thought the video feeds were sent to Tower-Thirteen. I thought that was the whole point of having the cameras; that the prisoners on a short sentence went through the footage.”
“Ely,” she said with puzzled patience, “there aren’t any short sentences. Not for the last three years. Didn’t you know?”